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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29693910">Chasing That Rabbit</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarfemm/pseuds/solarfemm'>solarfemm</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bonding, Falling In Love, Happy Ending, Love Through The Ages, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Assault, Recovery, Trauma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:35:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,328</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29693910</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarfemm/pseuds/solarfemm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean deals with his trauma, and along the way finds happiness.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Chasing That Rabbit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please read the tags. I've been kinning Dean Winchester since 2005 and the only way I know how to deal with my problems is projecting my issues onto him. This is not something I usually write or read. I was just coming to terms with some gruesome truths from my childhood and this happened. I'm not looking for sympathy, but I think it's important to note that I have lived experience of this topic and it's not coming out of nowhere. To everyone else who has dealt with assault or CSA, I love you, you're not alone, and it wasn't your fault. </p>
<p>Here are some resources for sexual assault/abuse survivors:<br/>https://au.reachout.com/articles/sexual-assault-support</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It comes to him in flashes, in his dreams. He’s 7, maybe 8, and he’s staying with one of John’s friends while Dad is on a hunt in Louisville. The friend doesn’t have a face. He has hands, and the hands paw at Dean’s clothes, yellow nails clawing, curved and sickly. He has a voice, and that voice tells Dean to do things, demands barked out like sparks off hot asphalt. He has eyes, the lightest blue, and the night Castiel busts down that barn door, Dean is reminded of things outside his control. Men who take with their clawed hands, men who demand with their hot-spark voices. It was Alistair’s favorite way to torture him in hell. With Dean strung up six ways to Sunday and naked, exposed to the fetid air, Alistair would shift and change into the thing in Dean’s flashes, in his dreams. </p>
<p>When he drives the knife into Castiel’s heart, he feels fear, real fear, kicked-up dirt and spat-up gravel fear. He had promised himself since the week he spent at that house that he would never be weak again. He was never going to be one of those men that took. Never going to be one of those boys that was taken from. He would be strong, for Sammy, for Dad. </p>
<p>It takes him over 30 years to give up that ghost.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Castiel is always looking at him, and when he’s not looking at Dean, he’s in Dean’s space. It’s like they’re tethered. Wherever Dean goes, Cas goes with him. Unless he’s got angel business, which happens less and less these days. Sam’s still off in Nebraska or wherever, because even though Dean saw what was going to become of them—that Sam would say yes to the Devil himself—Sam said it was safer to stay away, at least for now.</p>
<p>So Dean and Cas hit up bars, drink until the morning, and have a fucking great time, thank you very much. Dean thinks about going home with the bartender, who’s wearing low-rider jeans and has tattoos up her arms, but then he looks at Cas, who’s picking at his burger mournfully.</p>
<p>“What’s up, sunshine?”</p>
<p>Cas sighs. Honest to God, the angel sighs. “Everything seemed so certain a week ago. We would find Raphael, and then Raphael would tell us where God is. But now—we have nothing to go on.”</p>
<p>Dean isn’t exactly in the mood to talk this out again. “I think we should pack it in for the night,” Dean suggests. </p>
<p>Cas nods quickly as though he’s thankful for the excuse, and follows Dean out of the bar. The night is cool and smells of soft rain, the gravel crunching under their feet as they make it over to Baby. Dean waits a beat as he stops. </p>
<p>“Do you want to drive?”</p>
<p>“Where?”</p>
<p>“Back to the motel.”</p>
<p>Cas tilts his head and Dean can tell he’s trying to figure Dean out, so he shakes his head and steps back. “Don’t read my mind, Cas, it’s weird.”</p>
<p>“My apologies.”</p>
<p>Dean sits in the driver’s seat, and when Cas sits in the passenger seat, his trenchcoat spreads across the aisle into Dean’s space. He can smell Jimmy’s cologne, a scent that never leaves Cas and, since they’ve been spending more time together, never leaves Dean’s head, either. </p>
<p>He coughs and starts the car, and they drive in silence back to the motel. </p>
<p>“I don’t know about you,” Dean says, as he tosses his keys on the bedside table. “But I am fucking beat to hell. And you look like you’ve been on the wrong side of Freddy Krueger.”</p>
<p>Cas looks down at his clothes, which he has just now noticed have been torn from the werewolf who attacked him, three seconds before he smote the crap out of her. </p>
<p>“Right,” Cas says, and when Dean blinks his clothes are fine again. </p>
<p>“Cool superpower.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” Cas says, even though he clearly doesn’t understand what Dean’s talking about. But he’s looking again. Dean shivers and moves to the bed to take off his boots.</p>
<p>Cas looks too, then, watching as Dean unlaces the boots, kicks them off, and lies back on the bed. </p>
<p>“Christ,” Dean says, “Will you sit down? You’re giving me the creeps.”</p>
<p>Cas takes a look around the room and perches on the desk. There’s no chair, so why the hell there’s a desk is anyone’s guess. </p>
<p>“God,” Dean says, before he shuts his mouth. Should he be blaspheming this much in front of an angel? Cas has never cared before, but maybe Dean should show a little respect. Another shiver runs through him as he remembers those words. <i>I raised you out of hell. I can throw you back in. You should show me some respect.</i> “I feel like I’ve been hit by a steamroller.”</p>
<p>“How so?”</p>
<p>Dean shrugs. He’s still lying on his back, so his shoulders go up towards the wall. He closes his eyes against the pounding in his skull. “My back aches, my head aches, and I’m pretty sure I tore something in my knee again.”</p>
<p>“I could give you a massage,” Cas suggests. </p>
<p>Dean’s eyes fly open. “What?” </p>
<p>Cas doesn’t look embarrassed at having offered to give another man a massage, but then why would he? He hasn’t shown any embarrassment at anything else he’s ever done. “A massage,” he repeats.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I heard you. How do you know how to give a massage?”</p>
<p>“Jimmy’s wife, Amelia, is a masseuse. She would practice on Jimmy.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, that’s not creepy at all,” Dean mutters. Cas probably hears him, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He waits patiently, making full eye contact, and Dean is reminded all over again that this is not his friend. This is at best his ally. This is a celestial being of light and energy that rescued him like a damsel in distress. This is someone who died for him. This is someone who threatened to put him back in hell at a time when Dean was so sure it was going to happen anyway, and so terrified. And now he’s offering Dean comfort. “Sure,” Dean says, because who turns down a massage? Cas has nice hands.</p>
<p>Cas moves fluidly across the room. “Lie on your stomach,” he instructs. “Jimmy always took his shirt off.”</p>
<p>“Um,” Dean says, before he sits up. He pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it in the direction of his duffel, acutely aware that Cas is standing over him, waiting for him to lie on his stomach. When he does, his heart jackrabbits at full speed, his head pounding from more than pain. </p>
<p>Fear.</p>
<p>Cas could do anything to him, and Dean—Dean is willing to let him.</p>
<p>Cas’s hands are warm when they touch Dean’s shoulders. It was a cold night with the rain, but Cas is warm. He’s a constant source of heat at Dean’s side, too, and his fingers dig into Dean’s muscles with just the right amount of pressure. He sighs and sinks into the mattress as Cas presses into his shoulders, as he moves down Dean’s back, as he fits his thumbs beneath the wings of Dean’s shoulder blades.</p>
<p>Dean thinks about Cas’s wings and how they were so black they absorbed all the light around them. Raphael’s wings were electric, but Cas’s are much cooler. </p>
<p>Dean might be drifting to sleep, who’s to say, when Cas lifts one hand and presses it against the burn on Dean’s shoulder. Heat floods through him like a jolt of electricity. He gets really hard really fast and instinctively ruts against the mattress while Cas jerks back like he’d been shocked, too.</p>
<p>“What the fuck—” Dean says, stopping himself from doing anything else. He rolls back to sitting, pulling the corner of the bedspread over his crotch as he looks at Cas. “—was that?”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” Cas says, looking at his hands. Jimmy’s hands. Not the hands that pulled him from hell. “I didn’t realise. I thought—I shouldn’t have done that.”</p>
<p>Okay, so <i>now</i> he looks ashamed. </p>
<p>“What did you do?”</p>
<p>“I thought there might still be some of my grace left in how I marked you.”</p>
<p>“Jesus, you make it sound like I’m your wife or something.”</p>
<p>Cas huffs a laugh and chances a look up. “You are mine, in a way.”</p>
<p>Dean coughs and pulls the covers tighter around himself. “Yeah, I get that. I mean, you’re mine too, you know? Ever since hell, I’ve felt this connection. There are a lot of angels, but I got the best one in the garrison.” He’s not sure why he says this. Dean is a lot of things, but he’s not a sharer. He would have rather gone to hell than admit how scared he was about going to hell, but then he did go to hell, and he’s realised there are things a lot worse than being scared.</p>
<p>But when Cas looks at his lips and then up at his eyes, Dean is exactly sure why. The lines coming out of his mouth are pick-up lines. Dean is <i>seducing</i> Cas. <i>Oh Christ</i>, Dean thinks, as they both lean in at the same time, <i>it’s</i> working.</p>
<p>Dean thinks the kiss is going to be some chaste, virginal thing, the best thing for Cas’s first time. So he presses his lips together and then presses them to Cas’s, but after a second of this it becomes clear that’s not what Cas wants. He opens his own mouth and pushes his tongue into Dean’s, tasting of bourbon and smelling of cologne as he pushes Dean back on the bed and throws a leg over him.</p>
<p>“Easy, tiger,” Dean says, as Cas pulls back with a gasp.</p>
<p>“I don’t know where that came from,” Cas admits.</p>
<p>Dean wiggles his hands where his wrists are pressed to the bed. Cas’s hands are tight, unyielding, and so strong. “I mean, it’s not like it’s not a turn on or anything. I thought we might just take it easy for your first time.”</p>
<p>Cas’s pupils are blown wide and he gazes at Dean’s mouth while he talks as though he wants to eat Dean alive. “I don’t want to take it easy.”</p>
<p>“Jeez, you kiss a guy once and he wants to dick you down until sunrise. Just my luck.” He means for it to be a joke, but in that moment he’s not sure what’s real. The haze between reality and fiction has been dissipating for some time now, and Dean’s not sure if he’s even real, if any of it is real. But Cas’s hands on him are burning, and he wants this.</p>
<p>“I would gladly dick you down until sunrise,” Cas says, without a hint of irony. </p>
<p>Dean kisses him again, just for the hell of it. Cas’s hands roam over his chest, brushing his nipples in a way that makes him moan into Cas’s mouth. </p>
<p>But it doesn’t last. </p>
<p>He thinks of men’s hands, and how he hasn’t let them touch him since Lee. He thinks of how it didn’t really mean anything with Lee anyway, because you can never get involved with hunters, Dad always said. Except it did, because Lee was Dean’s first, and it meant everything. And as it turns out, Dad was full of shit, because the whole Campbell family line were hunters and he didn’t know a goddamn fucking thing, he didn’t know jack shit about anyone, about his wife or his kids or his fucking <i>friends</i> and—</p>
<p>Dean gasps and pushes Cas away. </p>
<p>“Sorry, I—“ Dean’s head hurts. He’s panting and sweaty, and he tweaked his knee. “Sorry, I can’t, I just—“</p>
<p>“Dean,” Cas says, and it’s so understanding that Dean wants to fucking scream. Cas shouldn’t be letting Dean apologise. He should be taking what he wants, because that’s what men do.</p>
<p>But—Cas is not a man. And that undoes Dean in the worst way. Who are you if the one you are attracted to isn’t anything? He puts his head between his knees and breathes in the must of the bedspread.</p>
<p>“I can’t, Cas, I—you don’t know. About me, I mean. Things I’ve done. Things I’ve seen.”</p>
<p>“Dean,” Cas says again. He puts his fingers beneath Dean’s chin and brings his head back up so he can breathe properly. “I know. I saw you in hell. I remade you, with all your memories. I know everything.”</p>
<p>“Then you know how broken I am,” Dean blurts out. “Hell, it was like—reliving my worst memories. My nightmares. And they get pretty fucking grim.”</p>
<p>He tries for a sardonic smile but fails even at that.</p>
<p>For once, Cas seems to get what Dean wants and stands. His tie is loose again and his trenchcoat ruffled. His hair, too. Dean did that. He ruffled Cas up. </p>
<p>“I need to sleep,” Dean says. He pushes the covers away. He’s not hard anymore. Nothing to see, nowhere to go. “You can—lie next to me, if you like.” Cas should stay. Cas should really stay and Dean will get over whatever he’s going through and they can fuck and then Cas will leave and it’ll be so awkward that he never comes back and Dean can get on with his life. He doesn’t <i>need</i> Cas, not really. But he wants him.</p>
<p>Cas shakes his head. “I need to resume my search.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Dean says, like a fucking jackass. And then Cas is gone, those blue eyes going with him.</p>
<p>Two days later, Dean’s staring down those eyes, but they’re wrong. They’re glassy this time, hazed over, perched above a beard that looks so odd on Cas’s face. </p>
<p>“He loves you, you know.” Older Cas sighs, and that’s wrong too. “He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s falling in love with you.”</p>
<p>Dean doesn’t need to ask. He knows, because he’s falling in love with Cas too.</p>
<p>“What about you? Are you still in love with—me?” It’s a stupid question, but he has to know. He has to know he can make it out alive, and that Cas makes it out with him.</p>
<p>Older Cas laughs and it comes out cruel and mocking. “Dean, Dean, Dean. You are an endless source of entertainment.” He opens one of the pots on his desk and picks out what looks like candy, but is most likely dried fruit. He doesn’t offer a piece to Dean. </p>
<p>“Shut up,” Dean says. He can’t find anything to hold onto. This world is entirely alien to him—no Bobby, Jo or Ellen, and his own face walking around with a bad attitude. And that fucking thigh holster, Christ. Talk about tacky.</p>
<p>Cas turns to him and it’s like all the drowsiness has faded. He’s clear-eyed again, moon-bright and candy-sweet. “I couldn’t stop loving you if I tried. And believe me, I have tried.”</p>
<p>Dean leaves that world with the scent of pot clinging to his clothes and a hickey on his neck that lasts for three days.</p>
<hr/>
<p>He starts turning tricks again. It’s easier to get money that way, and it’s not like his body is his own, anyway. He finds guys who’ll put their greedy hands on him, kiss him with their sour breath, fuck him until he can’t stand. The first time, he pukes in a dumpster while Sam sleeps in the Impala. The second time, he doesn’t think about the friend. It gets easier and easier.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Dean wakes up from another dream about hell with a name burned into his brain. Shawn. The guy’s name was Shawn. Old Shawn, who smelled like diesel fuel and Camel cigarettes.</p>
<p>He looks to his left to find Sam fallen asleep at his keyboard. Dean wakes him gently, prises him up from his chair, and deposits him on the other bed. His own bed doesn’t look as inviting as it did four hours ago.</p>
<p>Instead of sleeping, he takes his phone, pulls his jeans back on, and walks outside. The night is warm, muggy, but they’ll only be in Shreveport until they finish the case, and then they can get the hell out of Dodge. People here are so nice, it creeps Dean out.</p>
<p>He flips his phone open and speed dials number 2. Cas picks up after the second ring, and Dean is so glad to hear his voice. They haven’t seen each other since Cas tried to kill the half-demon kid, and Dean needs to know he hasn’t gone completely off the rails.</p>
<p>“Hello, Dean,” Cas says, his voice a deep rumble that sets Dean’s teeth on edge from how badly he likes hearing it. </p>
<p>“Breaker, breaker, 10-4,” Dean says.</p>
<p>Cas huffs out a laugh. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”</p>
<p>Dean shrugs, even though Cas can’t see it. “I got my nightly four hours. What are you doing?”</p>
<p>“I’m currently picking through the remains of a pawn shop to find the Shroud of Turin.”</p>
<p>“What, like the actual Shroud?”</p>
<p>“Mm. It’s not here, though. The owner died for nothing.”</p>
<p>“Woah, woah, woah,” Dean says, pushing himself off from the outside wall of the motel. “You didn’t kill anyone, did you?”</p>
<p>“No, not this time. Demons got here first. I think they’re doing the same thing I am: looking for God.”</p>
<p>“Why would they be looking for God?”</p>
<p>Cas pauses for dramatic effect. “To kill him.”</p>
<p>“Okay, great. That’s just what we need.” Dean scrubs a hand over his face. “Where are you? Wanna fly over and we can hash this out?”</p>
<p>“I’d like that.”</p>
<p>Dean gives him the address and Cas is there in two seconds. His coat is ripped and there’s a smidge of blood on the bridge of his nose, but he looks the same, seemingly unflappable, understanding, and oblivious. </p>
<p>“You, ah,” Dean says, flicking his collar. </p>
<p>“Oh,” Cas says, looking down. “I’m not sure if I can mend it. My powers are weakening more and more.”</p>
<p>“Remind me to teach you how to sew.”</p>
<p>“I’d like that,” Cas says, a smile curving his lips. They’re chapped, as usual, because Cas doesn’t understand basic necessities. Dean wants to kiss them. It makes him ache, this wanting. It rends him in two. “I’m afraid I’m no closer to finding God than I was months ago when I started looking.”</p>
<p>“Well, you know dead-beat dads. Good for fuck all.”</p>
<p>Instead of getting angry at Dean for blaspheming, Cas sighs. “You didn’t call to talk about my father.”</p>
<p>Dean’s heart beats faster at that. “Oh, I didn’t?”</p>
<p>Cas shakes his head, his gaze intent and hot on Dean’s. “You wanted to ask me something.”</p>
<p>Dean licks his lips, suddenly dry-mouthed. “I wanted to know, um. I just. I wanted to know it wasn’t my fault. Right?”</p>
<p>Cas nods. If he was a human with human mannerisms, he would look at Dean with pity, but Cas doesn’t. Whatever Dean is, Cas has never pitied him. “Of course it wasn’t your fault.”</p>
<p>Dean feels tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. “Even though he said—he said if I didn’t let him, he would take Sammy.”</p>
<p>“It wasn’t a choice for you,” Cas says. “You will always protect your brother first before you protect yourself.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think I know how to protect myself, Cas.” Dean leans back against the motel wall, which is cool through his shirt. “I feel like an open wound.”</p>
<p>“You were a child, Dean. Nothing that happened to you was your fault.” When Cas says it so simply, Dean believes it. Of course, he was a child. “You did the only thing you knew how to do: protect Sam.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Dean says. He’s crying openly now, the tears dripping down his face and collecting on his shirt. Cas looks at him with a sense of longing. </p>
<p>“I can take your memories, if you’d like.” </p>
<p>Cas says it so casually it stumps Dean for a second. “No, I think I—I think it’s better this way. I already don’t remember so much about my childhood. I want to hold onto the things I have, even if they’re bad.”</p>
<p>Cas nods again. “Is there any more comfort I can provide?”</p>
<p>Dean shakes his head. “Thanks, Cas. I just—needed to get it out of my head for a minute. Make sure I wasn’t going completely nutso.”</p>
<p>Cas moves over to stand next to him, once again a wall of heat at Dean’s side. He’s solid and real and when Dean puts his forehead on Cas’s shoulder, breathing in the smell of his coat, Cas doesn’t move away. Instead, he produces a handkerchief from nowhere and dabs at Dean’s face. </p>
<p>Dean laughs. “Thanks.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know how to help,” Cas says, sounding bereft. </p>
<p>Dean pulls back to give him a comforting smile. “You don’t have to do anything. I’m fine, really.”</p>
<p>“You’re not,” Cas counters. </p>
<p>“Okay, I’m not. You happy?”</p>
<p>“Not when you’re in pain,” Cas says. He reaches out with a hand that Dean bats away.</p>
<p>“Don’t try that shit on me, Cas, okay? When I need to be <i>cured</i> or whatever, I’ll tell you.” Dean wipes his face with the back of his hand. As soon as he moves away, he feels ten degrees colder, even with the air so muggy his breath is sweating. “I should go back inside.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Cas says, and steps away from the wall to let Dean pass. </p>
<p>Dean wants to ask him to stay—he wants it so badly his teeth hurt—but he can’t handle the rejection of Cas saying he has somewhere else to be, somewhere that isn’t with Dean. But as he passes, Cas reaches out to grab his hand, the meat of it between his wrist and pinkie finger. Dean stops in his tracks.</p>
<p>“I want you to know,” Cas says, barely more than a breath, “that I feel, now. Emotions, sometimes fleeting, sometimes unbearable, but they are there. I feel them within me. What you must go through—I can’t imagine.”</p>
<p>They don’t look at each other. They stand shoulder to shoulder, facing different ways. It almost feels like a goodbye. Dean is rooted to the spot by Cas’s hand on his, this warmth, this connection that only they share. It is as unique as Cas is.</p>
<p>“Swing by anytime, Cas,” Dean says, and Cas lets him go.</p>
<hr/>
<p>It’s always there, in the back of his mind. He always feels unclean, the way Sam describes it sometimes, but different. Sam has this thing inside him. What happened to Dean is a touch on his skin, a taste in his mouth, and a smell in his nose. The feelings of it are so convoluted in his brain he can’t even hope to unpack them.</p>
<p>There’s a rolling blackout in Little Rock the week they’re on what they think is a rogue hellhound case, but turns out to be the literal Beast of Gévaudan. Or a beast, at least. It’s like a wolf on steroids, nothing they’ve seen before. But they kill it by hacking its head off, then salting and burning its body. When they trudge back to the motel, Sam falls asleep within seconds of lying down, but Dean is thinking, thinking, thinking. Moonlight streams through the motel room windows, casting a rectangle of light over them.</p>
<p>He gets up and finds a complimentary pad of paper near the motel phone, complete with a pen. He sits at the desk and looks at the page as though it holds the secrets of the universe. He smooths it down with the palm of his hand and holds the pen an inch above it. Then he starts to scribble, hard and fast and messy and stupid. He scribbles until the pen tears the paper and the paper is full up. He rips that page off and starts another page, scribbling and scribbling. </p>
<p>He tears the page. He scribbles. He tears the page. He scribbles. The black ink gets all over his hands, marking him. He tears and scribbles and tears and scribbles until the pen runs out of ink, and then he tears the rest of the pages until they’re all torn up into confetti. The room is a mess, and Dean doesn’t feel like cleaning it. In the morning, Sam will look at it, look at Dean, and think his thinking thoughts, but Dean won’t say anything and Sam won’t say anything. There’ll be nothing to say. Dean has issues, and Sam knows this. Dean has always had issues, and he has no way of working through them because he refuses to get help. At least he has the mental clarity to know what his issues are.</p>
<p>He lies down on the bed on his stomach, one hand beneath the pillow on his Colt. The other hand comes up to rest on the mark on his shoulder, and he swears that just for a second he can feel it throb.</p>
<hr/>
<p>He’s never been the praying type, but once he gets to purgatory, he realises that he’s never been the dying type, either. The litany of his thoughts is never ending, minute after minute of <i>gotta find Cas, where’s Cas, gotta find Cas, he’s gotta be here, I know it, I can feel it, it’s gotta be him, where is he, where’s Cas</i> that he’s sure bleeds into both his prayers and his sleep. Every night he prays, and for months and months it’s just him, Benny and the promise of getting out. It’s like a jail sentence with teeth. </p>
<p>But he gets out. He and Benny get out, and then Cas is there, and then Cas is laying his hands on Dean in a way that’s taking instead of giving. He hits Dean again and again, rattling his teeth loose, breaking his cheekbone, splitting his lip in three places. But the next touch he gives Dean is healing, and it’s like whiplash, it is. It’s beauty in the moment and it’s pain in the being. Dean would take it every time because all he knows is how to take the beatings given to him. <i>Ain’t it grand</i>, he thinks, on his knees as Cas breaks his wrist, <i>to be loved by you.</i></p>
<p>And then Cas is gone, like the others before him, like the last of Dean’s hope for a normal future.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Sammy isn’t allowed to die because Dean wouldn’t know who he is without him. Sammy isn’t allowed to die because he’s not the Christ figure of this story, no one’s nailing him to that cross, and no Judas is giving him a fucking kiss. Sammy isn’t allowed to die, because who would Dean lean on? Who would take up all the room in the Impala with his gazelle legs? Who would make sure Dean eats his vegetables? Who would save the world, again and again, when Dean is too weak to?</p>
<p>The truth is, Dean would burn the world down for his brother, and Sam would save it for Dean. Dean wouldn’t know how to be normal if you paid him to do it.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Claire is a breath of fresh air in the fetid swamp of Dean’s life, a kickstart heart and a revved-up engine. At 18, she’s more powerful and self-assured than Dean was at 26. She lays her trauma out there for the world to see, and she revels in it, wearing it like armour. Dean doesn’t know how to let the world see him, but the truth of him slips through and she can see who he is, she can pin him like a butterfly to a board, like a body crushed under the front wheels of a Mac truck. She spears him with her ice cold wit and humor, and he loves her for it. And in loving her, he becomes the dad she didn’t have for six years. </p>
<p>And he thanks a god he doesn’t believe in that she didn’t live through the worst life has to give and that missing her parents hits the depths of her trauma. She had a life, at least, one that was bright and shining, one that was hers. And now she gets a new life with Jody, Donna and Alex, with Cas and Dean, her surrogate family. The family she was always meant to have.</p>
<p>The family Dean was always meant to have.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Lucifer wears Cas like a knife to the gut. Looking into Cas’s eyes and seeing someone else, someone evil, someone who only knows destruction, is worse than never meeting him at all. Dean entertains the thought, if only for a second, that killing him is worth it. But he can’t. He can’t drive that blade between Cas’s ribs, even if the thing looking at him isn’t Cas. He can’t do it, because losing Cas is worse than anything Lucifer could do to him. Dean is broken in ways that defy description, but it’s mercy, is what it is, to drop his blade and sink to his knees and pray, once again, for Cas to come back.</p>
<hr/>
<p>It takes him three weeks to get used to the idea of seeing Mom again. He doesn’t tell her about his and Sam’s childhood. He doesn’t tell her about the things they did, they things that were done to them. He doesn’t tell her because he doesn’t have the words to even think it. It’s a jumbled mess in his brain, and he’s still not sure what’s real and what’s not. </p>
<p>But he gets to have Mom back.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Jack fits into their ragtag family the same way Cas did: interestingly, weirdly, and profoundly. </p>
<p>Dean comes into his room one afternoon to find him watching YouTube videos, and he looks up with a pleasant smile and asks, “Can I get a guitar?”</p>
<p>Dean drives him to the only music store in 20 miles and they look around. Jack picks up every instrument just to feel it, in love with the smooth wood of every guitar and leather of every bass drum. He tinkles piano keys. He holds up a flute and smells it. </p>
<p>He picks an Epiphone Les Paul, flaming red, 2 pick-up. Dean listens to him practice through the walls of the bunker, sitting on the ground with his back against the wall. Cas sits with him sometimes, shoulder to shoulder, his hands around a mug of coffee that he passes to Dean. </p>
<p>He thinks about that night, almost ten years ago now, that Cas touched his shoulder and felt his grace spark. Cas’s smile reaches his eyes, and Dean leans over to press their lips together in a kiss. It feels so natural, like breathing, like dreaming. Cas kisses back softly, and Dean succumbs to the quiet of the moment. Jack’s stuttered rhythm encloses the moment like a moth in a fist. It’s a simple life, and it’s theirs.</p>
<p>And when Mary dies—it hurts to consider that it was Jack. Jack says, “I understand,” and means it, and Dean is broken. He’s more broken watching his child kneel in the grass in a cemetery, just like the one Dean once knelt in when Sam fell into a hole, than he ever was at 8 years old. </p>
<p>He can’t do it. The army men stopped Sam and the guitar stops Dean. Dean wants to give Jack a normal life so badly, but they don’t know normal. They are so far out of the realm of normal, they’ve been hitchhiking to Damaged Land for 3000 miles. But Jack plays guitar and sings old blues songs when he washes dishes because he knows Dean likes it. </p>
<p>And Jack dies anyway, because that’s the way it goes.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Cas says it first. <i>You asked me what’s real? We are.</i></p>
<p>And Dean can’t deal with it. He’s so angry, always so angry that he could split in two, and then he’d be two halves of half a person wandering around bleeding all over the place. Even more than he is now. And when Cas leaves, Dean thinks, <i>Ain’t it grand to be loved by you</i>, but he doesn’t say it, because Cas would know the effect he has on Dean, how Dean hasn’t been able to get Cas out of his head for a decade, how in love he is with this wavelength of light and intent, and Dean would be weak again.</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <i>Of course I forgive you. I love you. I need you. You’re everything to me.</i>
</p>
<p>“You don’t have to say it.” Cas looks so grateful and happy that it pierces the armour Dean constructed carefully around himself. “I heard your prayer.”</p>
<p>But Dean does. The rift is about to close but Dean takes ten seconds to say it. “I love you. You gotta know that. I love you more than anything.”</p>
<p>Cas pulls him through the rift, tugging him close and kissing him stupid. He drops the plant and grabs Dean’s wrist to lead him to Dean’s bedroom. The kiss is a surety of their love for each other. Cas’s hands are nimble and quick as he undoes Dean’s jeans and sinks to his knees. The sight short-circuits something in Dean’s brain, but he pulls Cas up again.</p>
<p>“No, Cas, wait, I just want—“ He kisses Cas again. He’s hard, but it’s inconsequential, and instead of focusing on himself, he keeps kissing Cas and pushes his hand down Cas’s pants. </p>
<p>“Dean,” Cas breathes, as Dean’s hand closes around him. Dean chases his mouth again. He doesn’t want to stop kissing Cas for even a second. He’s drunk on this in a way that good whiskey can’t get him, his head muzzy and his body thrumming with heat and electricity. </p>
<p>He brings Cas off roughly, feeling the wet mess coat his fingers and hand before he pulls it out of his pants to lick it clean. Cas pushes his face into Dean’s neck, his breath hot and sticky. “I love you, Dean,” he says, as he kisses him there. </p>
<p>Then he drops to his knees again and finishes the job. Dean pets Cas’s hair as he sucks Dean off, until Dean comes into his mouth and Cas swallows it all. </p>
<p>He grabs Dean’s hands and looks up at him, the light turning his eyes to a crystalline blue. “You are many things, Dean Winchester, but you are not, and have never been, weak. Loving doesn’t make you weak. It makes you the strongest, most selfless being in the universe.”</p>
<p>And then the wall opens, sludge comes pouring out, and Cas is gone.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Something happens when Jack takes Chuck’s power. One minute, he’s a man blazing with light and intent, and the next, a baby sits in the puddle of Jack’s clothes. He’s not even crying. He looks up at Dean with wonder in his eyes, a perfect mixture of green and blue. Dean wraps him up in Jack’s shirt, and they take him home.</p>
<hr/>
<p>In the end, Dean only has to live two weeks without Cas. </p>
<p>After two weeks of pouring non-stop over the lore, he’s asleep at 3 in the afternoon because he hasn’t slept in three days and Sam forced him to. He dreams of hands, hands touching and giving and loving, a mouth like a strawberry, rough and juicy at the same time. </p>
<p>A sucking noise makes its way into Dean’s consciousness and he opens his eyes to see Cas stepping out of the wall that claimed him. His heart pounds a military tattoo in his chest and he shoots out of bed to pull Cas into his arms. He presses his face into Cas’s shirt and smells him. </p>
<p>“Are you—“ He pulls back, touches Cas’s face. “Are you really here?”</p>
<p>“Yes, Dean,” Cas says, tears in his eyes. He’s so warm, but he smells of acrid air. It must be the Empty residue. Dean wants to wash him clean. “I’m here, it’s me.”</p>
<p>“What—“ Dean can’t get the words out. He’s been dreaming of this moment for two weeks. It seemed so impossible that he would ever see Cas again. “What happened?”</p>
<p>“I made a deal with the empty—another deal. I said I would give up my grace and become human, so I never come back.” He smiles, sniffs, and pulls Dean in for a kiss.</p>
<p>When they break apart, Cas’s brow furrows as he glances around the room. His gaze lands on the crib and his jaw drops open. “How long was I gone?”</p>
<p>Dean huffs a laugh. “Do you want to meet our son, Cas?”</p>
<p>Cas nods, his eyes full of wonder as Dean leads him over to the crib where Jack is asleep, sucking on his own thumb. Cas starts crying again, leaning his head on Dean’s shoulder. He can hear the sounds of Claire, Sam and Jody making lunch in the kitchen, and Fleetwood Mac filters through the gap in the door to tangle around their feet. It’s a perfect moment. It’s everything Dean’s ever wanted.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Rocky’s is a thriving bar now that Claire decided to turn it into a gay hotspot. Everyday, Dean gets to see older couples who have survived the worst of what life has to offer, and it fills him with so much hope that he’s buoyed with it. Claire works behind the bar when she’s not on hunts, and Kaia drops by every so often just to watch her work. They have a place not far from the bunker, but they stay over sometimes to look after Jack when Dean and Cas need a break. It’s a system that works for all of them. It’s a family.</p>
<p>Claire’s pouring shots for a couple of hunters when Dean takes the opportunity to slip into the supply closet with his phone out. It’s 3pm, late enough that Cas has to be up by now, and if he’s not, Dean’s going to cancel their Netflix account. He doesn’t answer when Dean calls him, which he usually doesn’t because he likes texting more than phone calls, so it’s an opportunity that Dean takes with both hands.</p>
<p>He waits for the beep and pitches his voice lower as he talks. “Cas, baby, hey. I’ve been thinking about you. Can’t stop thinking about you, actually. Can’t stop thinking about getting my hands on you, all over you, putting my mouth on you.” Dean does this every week with a 90 percent success rate of Cas mauling him when he gets home. “Wanna make you moan my name. Wanna make you come in me when I’m riding you and—“</p>
<p>Dean is shocked out of his soliloquy by a banging on the door. Claire hollers, “How many times do I have to tell you, old man? I can hear you.”</p>
<p>“Gotta go, love you, bye,” Dean rambles into the phone and hangs up. He opens the door with a sheepish grin in place as Claire tries not to laugh. </p>
<p>“We’re out of Budweiser. There’s a new keg in the basement. You know I’m not strong enough to lift those,” she says. </p>
<p>“Right,” Dean says, feeling his face blazing. “I’ll just, uh…”</p>
<p>Dean slips out of the supply closet and Claire’s mocking laughter follows him into the basement.</p>
<hr/>
<p>In the end, their decision to get married is out of practicality, at least at first. </p>
<p>Cas is filling out Dean’s tax form when he looks up with a pen in his mouth and says, “I don’t exist.”</p>
<p>Dean, laying a square of cheese on each burger in the pan, hums absentmindedly. “Yeah, you do. I can see you.”</p>
<p>“I mean, I don’t have a birth certificate. I don’t do my own taxes. I can’t legally be Jack’s guardian.” He looks to his left where Jack is dipping his french fries in mayonnaise like a weirdo and completely missing his mouth when he tries to eat them. Today, Cas dressed him in a bear costume with a headband that has little bear ears on it. Dean hasn’t been the same since he first saw it.</p>
<p>“I can make you a birth certificate. What do you want it to say?”</p>
<p>“Well, it can’t say Winchester. Maybe Novak?”</p>
<p>Dean serves up the burgers on brioche buns with a bed of lettuce and tomato and a slather of corn relish. Cas takes his with a fond smile. “Thank you, love, this is wonderful.”</p>
<p>“Ain’t nothing for my baby,” Dean says with a wink. “So, Novak, huh?”</p>
<p>“It’s Claire’s name after all. Maybe Novak-Kline.”</p>
<p>Dean thinks about this for a second as he takes a bite of his burger, which is juicy as hell and cooked to perfection. “Castiel Novak-Kline. I like it. Maybe I’ll change my name as well and then we can be the Novak-Klines.”</p>
<p>A slow smile spreads across Cas’s face as he takes this in, until he’s beaming . “You’d give up the Winchester name?”</p>
<p>Dean shrugs. “You know I never got along with my dad. Would be nice to get rid of all that shit. Like a new start, you know?”</p>
<p>“You know, we can make it official,” Cas says. He’s still beaming, and Jack’s still eating his french fries. “We could get married.”</p>
<p>Dean pauses with the burger halfway to his mouth. “Cas, you sly dog, are you asking me to marry you?”</p>
<p>Cas shrugs. “Maybe.”</p>
<p>Dean’s heart starts to pound as he drops his burger back on his plate. “Wait right here.” Cas looks at him curiously as Dean winks and then hurries off to his room. It’s in here somewhere, in the drawer he keeps for himself that Cas doesn’t touch, because they do have <i>some</i> privacy from each other. They have to keep the magic alive somehow. He shovels all his papers aside to find the small box, feeling it in his hands as he hurries back to the kitchen. </p>
<p>Cas is busy wiping Jack’s face, so when he turns back, Dean is already kneeling on the ground. “Cas,” Dean says, then tugs on Cas’s arm to get his attention.</p>
<p>Cas turns back to him with a curious expression before he sees the box in Dean’s hands. He opens it slowly to reveal a simple gold band. Cas goes still, his eyes widening as he takes it in.</p>
<p>“I, uh. Wanted to ask you for a long time, I just couldn’t get up the nerve. But then you beat me to it, like you do everything.” Dean clears his throat and looks into the eyes of the man he loves more than anyone else on earth, in Purgatory, or in Heaven. “Buddy, will you marry me?”</p>
<p>Cas’s brow furrows. “Did you just call me ‘buddy’?”</p>
<p>Dean clears his throat. “I said ‘baby’.”</p>
<p>“Dean, if you call me buddy in your vows I will leave you at the altar.”</p>
<p>Dean’s heart pounds in his throat like a man walking on a tightrope. The city spreads out before his feet, and one misstep could cost him everything. </p>
<p>For a second, Dean thinks he might say no, despite their earlier conversation. But then Cas’s eyes well up and he pulls Dean up, both of them standing so that Cas can kiss him. “Yes, of course, of course.” Cas pulls the ring out of the box and holds it up to read the inscription. “‘Heaven is anywhere I’m with you.’ Dean, that’s so sappy.”</p>
<p>Dean laughs, and there are tears in his own eyes, as well. It’s the happiest moment of his life so far, and when Claire and Kaia come to visit that afternoon, Dean gets to tell them the news. Sam comes back from a hunt the next day, and Cas gets to tell him by virtue of being the only one awake at 3 am because Dean had passed out after another round of raucous celebration sex. They have a life together, and it’s good. They’re good.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The wedding is two parts disaster and one part the best party Dean has ever thrown. He looks around at the smiling faces of everyone who loves him, keeping in his heart the ones who aren’t there anymore, and he realises. He’s whole now. He’s not broken anymore.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you can't find a happy ending for yourself, writing Dean Novak-Kline's happy ending is the next best thing.</p>
<p>The idea for Rocky's being a gay bar and Dean calling Cas come from tumblr user castielsweedgarden, but I'd rather not tag them because this topic isn't something that everyone is willing to read. However, if you know them and think they'd like the shoutout, you can tell them.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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